“I’m so glad, Chief,” she said, feeling not so much glad as opportunistic. She decided to seize the moment. “Sir, do you think it’s possible we could report the rest of the story from St. Tropez? I think—”

“Oh no need,” the Chief interrupted with a chuckle. “We spoke with the Mayor of St. Tropez. The First Lady isn’t there.” He paused. “I stuck with the story because I had a feeling it’d be great TV. Good thing I did. I suspect your VOP is going to be in the stratosphere today.”

Natalie looked at the hotel TV where ATN was rerunning video of the yacht with the Breaking News banner “FLOTUS on DiCaprio Boat?”

She felt her surprise shift to anger. The boss knew FLOTUS wasn’t on the boat, and he made her play along with the cameraman anyway? This was a whole new class of pushing the limits. Not only ethically, but personally. They’d put her credibility on the line and Luques’s safety. They’d set her up, used her, let a man get shot—

“Sir, are you saying—?”

“My dear, I have to jump,” the Chief said. “You’ve got to watch what our boy Ryan is about to do!” And he was gone.

Natalie’s mind was spinning.

“Holy shit!” Matt yelped and Natalie watched him stab the remote control through his antibacterial plastic baggie. He and Dasha began staring like zombies at the TV. Natalie shifted her gaze to see what they were looking at.

On air, Ryan was standing in front of the protesters outside the embassy and—

Natalie blinked to make sure her eyes weren’t lying.

“Is he—undressing?” Natalie asked slowly.

Matt and Dasha were too mesmerized to respond.

Ryan’s hand had moved from his top button to the second, and third, and was now unbuttoning his shirt to reveal his chest.

“They say only women are sexualized in our culture. Well, are we sure?” Ryan said as he continued the slow tease, now down to his navel. He looked somewhere outside the shot, presumably at his producer, Andrea, and winked. “To challenge that theory, I am removing my shirt on camera.” He shrugged out of it and let it drop giving the camera a stunning view of his eight-pack. “If this video of my naked chest goes viral online, if it shows up in chat rooms,” Ryan said, sounding Defiant and Full of Intent, “if it is discussed on entertainment shows, if I’m booked on talk shows or the subject of other reports simply for showing my chest on air, I say we rethink this whole idea that women are the only ones being objectified.”

He was standing, somehow glistening and shirtless, in front of a sea of female protesters, delivering a polemic about the plight of hot twentysomething dudes with TV gigs.

This should be a soda ad, Natalie thought.

That was drowned out by another thought. Matt was right.